Jill Watterson waxes one of the water slides Monday at the Drake Springs Family Aquatic Center, one of many steps to winterize the park. / Elisha Page / Argus Leader

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Pool Attendance

Visits to public pools in Sioux Falls last summer were down 13 percent from the five-year average.

Location

2013

5 year average

Drake Springs

58,633

75,485

Terrace

51,813

68,155

Laurel Oak

51,503

56,103

Kuehn

32,699

38,340

Frank Olson

23,807

29,076

McKennan wading pool

20,607

21,525

Spellerberg

16,977

20,289

Total

256,039

294,630

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It’s been five years since the city got a new public pool, but this summer’s attendance numbers show the newest one remains the most popular.

Drake Springs Pool was the last to be rebuilt, and it went immediately from having the city’s fewest visitors to the most. Despite some doubts that the neighborhood would support it, those extra amenities — the water slides, spray features and lazy river — are a big draw.

Voters next spring will decide the fate of another aging pool where visits have declined. There’s still debate, though, whether it’s another aquatic park that the city needs or if a year-round indoor pool would be a better option.

Drake Springs, near 10th Street and Cliff Avenue, was rebuilt in 2008. Ever since, it’s drawn an average of 75,000 swimmers a season. That’s a far cry from before the upgrade when it averaged about 20,000 visits.

Spellerberg, a more basic pool, drew fewer than 17,000 visitors this year, ranking last among all the city’s pools. The next most comparable pool without fancy features, Frank Olson, drew about 29,000.

“The amenities are what make them popular,” recreation program coordinator Jean Pearson said. “There’s something for everyone.”

If a group comes with kids of different ages, whether it’s toddlers or teenagers, there’s something to keep them entertained, she said.

The other aquatic centers at Terrace Park and Laurel Oak were built 20 years ago, but they still are more popular than the city’s three traditional pools.

It wasn’t a great summer for swimming outdoors. This year brought a late start to swimming weather and a June and July that were much cooler than last year. That made for lower turnout at all public pools. Attendance was about three-quarters of what it was the year before.

“Last year was an unusually hot year, and we were only closed four full days with three of them being in the month of May,” Pearson said.

Cool weather kept pools closed 11 out of the first 17 days at the start of the most recent season. At the end of the summer, the popular Terrace Park pool closed two weeks early for construction of a permanent concession stand there.

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Starting next year, the city will be able to tell where people are coming from to visit the pools. The city started using a new electronic swipe passes that will allow them to track that information using zip codes.

Planning future pools

The city put $4.7 million into the upgrades at Drake Springs. Those weren’t the original plans, though. The City Council had approved a $12 million indoor facility at Drake Springs, but it was challenged by a group of residents who didn’t feel the neighborhood was a good fit for an indoor pool.

The same situation has come up at Spellerberg Park.

A consulting firm put together a new 10-year pool plan for the city that recommended building an indoor aquatics center at Spellerberg — an $18.5 million project. Last year, the council allotted money for designing the pool there.

That’s when a neighborhood group called Save Spellerberg petitioned the city in an effort to halt plans for an indoor pool. Instead, they’re asking voters to support a new outdoor facility that would replace the aging pool at Spellerberg that’s been in need of many repairs during the past few years.

“There’s no doubt we’ve got aging pools. We will need to talk about if we’re going to replace them and what to replace them with,” said Dave Fischer, Parks and Recreation assistant director.

An indoor pool in central Sioux Falls would draw about 80,000 visitors annually according to the city’s aquatic facilities master plan done earlier this year.

The same master plan recommended long-term changes to some existing pools, including replacing Frank Olson pool with a sprayground water play area and replacing Kuehn pool with an aquatic center similar to Drake Springs, but smaller.

Members of the Sioux Falls Aquatic Association said they support the plans laid out in the city’s master plan.

There are seven indoor pools in town, but none of them are public and it’s difficult to get time in a lane at many of them, said Sharon Chontos, who is on the Aquatic Association board. Her 14-year-old son swims with the Seals Swim Team.

They used to swim at the YMCA, but the gym closed its pool for good this summer to accommodate a housing renovation.

“That put a huge dent in the swimming community,” Chontos said.

Her son swims at Sioux Empire Fitness now. Lanes there are typically full, she said, and his practice time has been cut in half.